The Eulogy That The iPod Deserves

You can always sense it when a good pet is nearing the end.

You try to deny it, you try to reason away that there are still some good days every now and then. Deep down though, you know you have to say goodbye soon. And after holding on a few years longer than any of us ever thought it would, a dear friend of ours was finally put down.

But who can forget when it first debuted in October of 2001, with its simple 5 GB hard drive — barely enough to store 1,000 songs! — and a click-wheel that actually spun?

We were too excited with our shiny (well, sort of off-white) new friend to even care that we had to play Solomon with the hundreds of thousands of stolen mp3s we had Napstered/LimeWired/Kazaaed over time.

And as the years passed, we both grew…

Your wheel no longer had to spin. Instead, you began to sense our very touch and we began to learn your delicate sensitivities until we could pilot through albums and playlists whilst still totally being able to drive without a problem.

We were exploring both the open road and the infinite world of music together…

By The Way (a haiku)Couldn’t stop. Addictsto shindigs; choose notImitation life.

Then, in 2005, just when we thought we knew you as intimately as we knew ourselves, you changed everything…

In a Pleasantvillean technological revolution, you shattered everything we ever thought we knew to be true in the world. You gave us something amazing…

You gave us the gift of color.

But, alas, those were simpler times…

You could give us simple, one-color backgrounds and “Take California” by The Propellerheads and we would be enthralled…

That was before it all changed…

Before we needed more…

More, all of the time.

Yet still you did the best you could.

From that final cosmetic redesign in 2007 onward all you did was try and give us more storage for less money. You were willing to give that to us out of love, and we audiophiles who knew that nothing else compared to your 160gb option were willing to accept it out of greed.

But we both knew this day had to come.

As iPhones were birthed on top your gigantic shoulders, you became doomed by your own success. You were not an iPod anymore…

You were an iPhone that couldn’t make calls.

So we began to understand that every playlist, no matter how epic, has an ending. You can try to Repeat it All over, you can Shuffle the cards around a bit, but every battery runs out one day.